


It Goes On

by revel_ry



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, References to The Stranger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27474622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revel_ry/pseuds/revel_ry
Summary: Tetsurou says he applied to twelve different schools all across the country, taking endless exams that he didn’t mind at all for nothing better to do at the time, and that something about this one called to him once he got his acceptance. He once jokingly said that the something must have been Kei. At least, Kei thinks he was joking...“A twist of fate,” Kei guesses.“It is.” Tetsurou holds Kei’s hand tighter.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	It Goes On

A soft thump on the floor.

Kei turns onto his side, drawing in a deep breath, and blinks open his eyes. He peers over the edge of the bed at his pillow, fallen onto the hardwood in a fluffy white heap. A little further away, lying on his back on the floor, one arm behind his head and the other resting on top of his blanket over his midsection, Tetsurou still sleeps soundly.

Muted daylight through closed curtains washes over Tetsurou’s face, his hair fallen back from his forehead to reveal his features in full. When Kei looks up at the clock, it’s half past three in the afternoon. They drove through last night again—have been driving for days, from Tokyo all the way to the outskirts of Hiroshima, taking slow, mountainous back roads to avoid highway traffic and to _see things, Kei_ , stopping only to eat and sleep. They arrived here at nearly five a.m., to the place Tetsurou’s father moved without him years ago. _A place where the castle is somewhere in the distance,_ Tetsurou told him, _and time means more than you think._

Kei tilts his head at the thought, looking down at Tetsurou’s face, calm in his sleep.

Some twist of fate made them both attend Waseda University in Tokyo. For Kei, it was a dream school, academically selective and an honor to be accepted to. Tetsurou says he applied to twelve different schools all across the country, taking endless exams that he didn’t mind at all for nothing better to do at the time, and that something about Waseda called to him once he got his acceptance. He once jokingly said that the something must have been Kei. At least, Kei thinks he was joking.

Some other twist of fate put them both in 20th Century European Literature, even though Kei studied history and Tetsurou studied ecology. But Tetsurou only named that his major. He studied everything he possibly could—math, science, art, music, literature, philosophy—one of his personal favorites. Maybe that’s why it took him five years to do what took Kei three. And he still self-teaches, constantly; _Our time is fleeting_ , he says, his own little motto, paired with a casual smile as if he isn’t afraid of when that fleeting moment will end. Kei admires him for wanting to know everything he can in life. Kei always just wanted to become a teacher and settle down in the suburbs and do whatever people who teach and live in the suburbs do. Maybe all of that is why Tetsurou ended up in that class. Kei just wanted to learn about Europe, but Tetsurou always wanted to learn about anything.

And a final event—maybe not so much a twist of fate as a few lingering glances across the room—made them partners for a project in class on the book they were reading. Kei remembers Tetsurou doing everything: the planning, the writing, the drawing (he’s a brilliant artist, too), and most of the research. Kei insisted he do something of importance, when they first planned it out; he told Tetsurou that he felt bad that he was going to be doing all of the work and that there must be something he could do to help earn the grade he already knew Tetsurou would be getting for them. But Tetsurou just smiled at him and said that there was only one thing he needed Kei to do, and that he really _needed_ it, or else the project wouldn’t work. _You’re my_ tournant _,_ Tetsurou said. _My vital point._ And he asked Kei to read the entire novel out loud to him.

It was an easy, gliding beginning to their relationship. It happened on its own, with the not-yet-known as their facilitator and Tetsurou’s craving for knowledge and for Kei their motivator. Four days of reading in Tetsurou’s apartment, of Kei starting out nervous about how he should inflect things and stumbling here and there to eventually becoming comfortable with knowing that Tetsurou was listening to his every word. Four days of Tetsurou getting up randomly to make a mug of tea with honey and saying, _This’ll make your throat feel better. Here_. Four days of Tetsurou saying, _Stop_ , and Kei learning quickly that it meant Tetsurou was onto something, and sometimes he waited for half an hour while Tetsurou worked intensely in silence until he turned back around, made his easy smile at Kei, and said, _Okay. Go on_.

Four days of words that reminded him of Tetsurou: _I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t…_ _After a while you could get used to anything… I had lived my life one way and could just as well have lived it another… I opened myself to the benign indifference of the universe…_

Four days of a different kind of learning for Kei. Tetsurou saying, _You have the perfect voice for this book, Kei,_ and then watching him while he read, looking over at him in that way Kei only thought people looked at people in novels. Tetsurou telling him, _A little more. Don’t be shy. And don’t be so tense. Put your hands here,_ and bringing Kei’s hands around the back of his neck before holding his waist while he got Kei used to being kissed. Tetsurou saying, _I know we don’t love each other yet, but I’m still going to make love to you_ , when he gave Kei his first and second times.

Four days with Tetsurou on their project, and an inability to stop being with him once they got those full marks that Kei already knew were coming.

He doesn’t really know what it was that suddenly made Tetsurou suggest that they road trip back to what is now Tetsurou’s own home on Honshu the day after they graduated. He doesn’t really know what it was that made him say yes, either. Maybe it was because, after only that final semester of both of their degrees when they met in that class they both decided to take for no reason, Kei already knew where he was headed, and it was way, way down for Kuroo Tetsurou and the plan he must have had from the beginning. The vision of suburbs and college classroom with his own students faded secondary behind the image of Tetsurou in Kei’s life. His purpose became Tetsurou, and he thinks that it’s the other way around, too. Tetsurou never talks about the future, unless he wants to debate with Kei about how the world will end (and as an ecology student, Tetsurou always wins), or unless Tetsurou goes into a philosophical monologue about the existence of man and life in the universe and where the universe has got to after all of this time, this _time_ , Kei, and whether or not corporeality exists on the same plane as thought or if they’re really not connected in the first place, and what it means to have an everlasting soul if being everlasting is even possible, and hours and hours, more time than Kei understands, of things Kei will never know like Tetsurou does. Kei will never understand Tetsurou at all. He doesn’t need to understand him; it’s even better that way. Tetsurou has the positive allure of being something Kei will never fully have. He will always be searching for new corners of Tetsurou’s ever-widening mind. And where Kei lusts after Tetsurou’s seemingly infinite expanse of knowledge, Tetsurou lusts after Kei’s infinite capacity to listen to him.

If there were ever two people so destined to be together by some strange twist of fate, it was them.

Kei blinks at the ceiling, thinking that Tetsurou would like that line a lot. He often finds it funny how that’s the truth of their relationship when it started by Tetsurou listening to him.

He blinks at the ceiling, blinks at his pillow again, looks at Tetsurou.

All at once, it lands densely in his stomach. Everything he had is hundreds of kilometers away. His family, his school, his job opportunities, his life. All he has left of it is a heavy piece of paper congratulating him on his undergraduate degree, and Tetsurou, lying there on the floor. A wave of panic and anger washes over him: the thought that he has to go home right now, that he was stupid to do this at all, that he hates Tetsurou for taking him away.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to go, he isn’t stupid, and he doesn’t hate Tetsurou. How could he ever hate someone so near to the light?

He finds his glasses on the nightstand and sits up, getting out of the bed ( _his_ bed) and going to the window. When he pulls back the curtains, the landscape outside shows the beginnings of a city unfamiliar yet quite similar to his own, hazy mountains in the distance that are somehow always there from any angle, as though the coast didn’t exist and the two of them are trapped inside a small divot in the earth, made by something in the past, and whether things exist outside of it or not doesn’t matter.

At the edge of the city is a stone building: a library four stories high, not as big as the one at their university but much older, and what Kei suspects is one of Tetsurou’s reasons for coming here. A little farther off is a school, elementary through junior high.

_“There’s a job opening there soon,” Tetsurou says. It’s one o’clock in the morning on their final day of driving. They’ll be at Tetsurou’s inherited house in just under four hours._

_“Will you take it?” Kei asks._

_Tetsurou smiles. “The job is for an eighth grade history teacher.”_

_Kei watches another place he’s never been before pass by. “Oh.”_

If Kei looked out of the other side of the house, he would still see the mountains, but less city and more land. Tetsurou has never told him just how much his father left him when he died, but Kei has seen enough now to know that there is no use in asking.

It was no mistake coming here. He’ll have to get over the fact that everything he knew is gone, over the other side of what he can see.

“You didn’t pull the lever.”

Kei startles and turns around. Tetsurou is in the exact same place, but his eyes are open and he’s smiling. The window’s light meets the curve of his lips. “You’re awake,” Kei says.

“Your pillow fell.”

“Oh. What?” Kei asks.

“For me,” Tetsurou says. He sits up and his blanket falls, revealing his upper body. “You killed the other ones for only me. I thought you were utilitarian.”

Kei blinks at him. “I am.”

“You must like me a lot, then.”

Kei just looks at him. “That bed is a lot more comfortable than the car.”

Tetsurou laughs and leans back on his hands. “Definitely. Even the floor is better than that.”

“Why are you on the floor?”

Tetsurou tilts his head, that easy smile on his lips. “You asked me to stay with you.”

_“Okay. I’ll head to the other room now,” Tetsurou says, standing in the doorway._

_Kei, sitting on the edge of his new bed in his new home, not an hour before the sun comes up, nods. “Okay.”_

_Tetsurou starts to go._

_“Actually—can you stay in here?” Tetsurou turns and gazes at him like people do in novels. “I know it’s stupid,” Kei says._

_Tetsurou shakes his head. “Of course I can. I’ll sleep on the floor.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because when you wake up you’re going to freak out a little bit and you might be more comfortable if I’m not in bed with you.”_

_“Oh. Okay.”_

There hasn’t been a time that Kei can remember when Tetsurou wasn’t right. “Oh. Yeah. I forgot.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Freaking out.”

“Oh.” He breathes in.

“It’s okay,” Tetsurou says. “I thought you might.”

Kei nods. “It isn’t because of you.”

Tetsurou waves him over. Kei goes to him and sits in front of him on the floor. “‘I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again,’” Tetsurou recites.

_“It’s existentialist, in a way,” Tetsurou tells him. They’re lying on his bed in his apartment. The book is in one of Kei’s hands; Tetsurou’s hand is twined with the other. “To say only what you feel. To value the time around you.”_

_“What does it mean?” Kei asks._

_“It means that no matter what, you don’t have to play the game with me. Life isn’t worth that time wasted. When I say something to you, I mean it. Every time.”_

_“A twist of fate,” Kei guesses._

_“It is.” He holds Kei’s hand tighter._

_Kei squeezes back, and lifts the book up to begin reading again. “‘To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing…’”_

“‘I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore,’” Kei recites in answer. He looks into the darkness of Tetsurou’s eyes. “I think I’m scared.”

Tetsurou nods. “I understand.”

“It’ll be better soon.”

Tetsurou takes his hands. “Take a breath.”

Kei does. He insists to himself that all of his thoughts about Tokyo and everything back there, back in time, flow from his body as he breathes out.

“You and me,” Tetsurou tells him. “It’s all we know.”

For someone who knows so much, it amazes Kei that Tetsurou would think of them like that.

Tetsurou pulls him in to hold him closer. Kei wraps his arms around his body, and Tetsurou whispers things to him that he’ll forget by the time they pull away but that will stay with him forever. He holds Tetsurou against him, feels the gentle press of lips under his ear once in a while, and he listens to the things Tetsurou says because that is what Tetsurou loves most about him and what he loves most about Tetsurou.

“Kei, I can get you that interview. I can take you into the city.”

Kei keeps his eyes closed, breathing in the scent of Tetsurou’s skin that tells his mind that the foreign smell of this place seems a little more familiar. “Maybe tomorrow,” he says. “Or later. Somewhere further along in time.”

Tetsurou kisses him again. “All right.”

“I know our time is fleeting,” Kei swears.

Tetsurou says, “It goes on.”

**Author's Note:**

> English-translated quotes from "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!  
> Follow or visit me on  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/revel__ry)  
> to chat or if you'd like me to write something for you :)


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